MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
THE FORGOTTEN SWAMP:
NAVIGATING POLITICAL ISLAM
Guilain Denoeux
Dr. Denoeux is associate professor of government at Colby College in
Waterville, Maine.
W
e need to “drain the
swamp.” This expression
has recurred like a leitmotif
in the comments of pundits
and policy officials asked to justify
Washington’s ever-expanding war on
terrorism. But, alas, one critically important mud flat has received scant attention
in the intense media coverage that has
accompanied the war in Afghanistan and
its extension to new settings: the swamp of
analytical confusion surrounding the use of
words such as “Islamic fundamentalists” or
“Islamic radicals.” Terms have been
thrown around lightly, often without a real
understanding of their connotations and
limitations. There has been little appreciation for the fact that they are artificial
constructs, usually elaborated by outsiders,
and that they sometimes may confuse
more than they explain. For instance, do
“Islamic fundamentalists” differ from
“Islamic radicals,” or can the two terms be
employed interchangeably? Are “Muslim
fundamentalists” merely the expression,
within the Islamic world, of a broader
“fundamentalist” trend visible in other great
religious traditions? Why do so many
scholars prefer the term “Islamism” to
“fundamentalism”? In what context did
the transnational radical Islam of Osama
bin Laden develop, and how does it relate
to earlier variants of radical Islam? Has
the nature of Islamism itself changed
significantly over the past 30 years? And
where does the Taliban movement fit in the
broader spectrum of Islamist phenomena?
Answering such basic questions would
seem to be a prerequisite to any substantive discussion of Islam’s changing role and
manifestations in Middle East politics. The
task should be relatively easy considering
that, since the 1970s, a substantial body of
both academic and policy-oriented literature has developed on political Islam. By
and large, however, the public debate thus
far has tapped into only a fraction of that
expertise. Yet, at this critical juncture –
when more than ever we need to pause,
reflect on and debate what our long-term
strategy toward political Islam should be –
it is imperative that the concepts used in
that discussion be fully understood in their
complexity and ramifications.
The central objective of this paper is to
contribute to such a goal. Drawing on the
existing literature, it aims to provide, in one
place, a succinct presentation of key
concepts and issues required to analyze
political Islam, particularly in its more
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DENOEUX: NAVIGATING POLITICAL ISLAM
radical manifestations. It is hoped that
such an endeavor will benefit as broad an
audience as possible, answering the
question still on the lips of many, “Who are
those people and what do they want?”
Islamic state. For the same reasons, a
journalist in Beirut may think of herself as
a Muslim professional (for reasons of birth
and because she thinks Islam is an important component of her identity) but she
may refute the label of “Islamic writer”
(because her writing is not driven by
Islamic referents).
“MUSLIM” OR “ISLAMIC”?
The two terms are often used interchangeably. For instance, one may refer to
“Islamic civilization” or to “Muslim civilization.” Yet of course a “Muslim scholar” (a
scholar who is also a Muslim) is not the
same as an “Islamic scholar” (a scholar,
Muslim or not, who specializes in the study
of Islam). But there are also more subtle
differences in the usage of these two
words as adjectives. For instance, one of
the leading students of political Islam
observes that he uses “Muslim” to refer to
a fact, a cultural reality, while by “Islamic”
he means to convey political intent.1
According to that distinction, for instance, a
“Muslim country” is merely “a country in
which the majority of the population is
Muslim.” By contrast, an “Islamic state”
designates “a state that bases its legitimacy
on Islam” – a state in which Islam presumably plays a central role in public life and in
legitimizing the existing sociopolitical order,
and in which the government is committed
to upholding values and modes of behavior
that it deems to be in conformity with
Islam. Similarly, a “Muslim intellectual” is
“an intellectual of Muslim origin and
culture,” while the expression “Islamic
intellectual” may be used to describe “an
intellectual who consciously organizes his
thought within the conceptual framework
of Islam.”2
According to those standards, Iran and
Saudi Arabia are both “Islamic states”
(though very different ones at that!), while
Egypt is a Muslim country, but not an
ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM
As a way of referring to the variety of
movements and ideas that have become
increasingly central to the public life and
political scene of many countries in the
Muslim world over the past 30 years, the
expression “Islamic fundamentalism” is
both useful and problematic. It is useful in
that it draws attention to the fact that, like
other forms of fundamentalism, what these
movements and ideas have in common is a
call for restoring the original purity and
integrity of the faith through a literal
reading of the founding religious texts. (In
the case of Islam, these texts consist of the
Quran, Islam’s holy book, and the Sunna
or hadith, which is the reported collection
of the words and deeds of Prophet
Muhammad). The expression “Islamic
fundamentalism” also implies that many
Muslims’ advocacy of a return to the
foundations of their faith is merely the
Islamic variant of a broader “fundamentalist” trend found in all the major religious
traditions. Seen in this light, the demands
of Islamic fundamentalists echo similar
ones emanating from many Christians,
Hindus, Sikhs and Jews. Thus the expression has the merit of inviting a comparative
approach to that phenomenon, the understanding of which presumably has much to
gain from what has been learned about
fundamentalist movements and ideologies
in other cultures. Certainly, like other
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MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
should be understood literally or that they
are open to only one interpretation. In
these and other respects, the concept of
“fundamentalism,” when applied to Islam,
confuses more than it explains.
To argue that Islamic fundamentalists
are Muslims who want to go back to “the
fundamentals” of their faith is also deceptive in two respects. First, the vast majority of Muslims agree on the fundamental
tenets of their faith (such as the belief in
the unity and oneness of God, the sacred
nature of the Quran, Muhammad’s role as
God’s messenger and as a source of
emulation, etc.). Second, many of those
usually referred to as “Islamic fundamentalists” do not, in fact, go back to the
“fundamentals” of Islam. Instead, they
selectively emphasize some of those
presumed fundamentals while downplaying
or ignoring others. Furthermore, within
their alleged “fundamentalist thought,”
those elements that are selected from the
sacred tradition are very often merged with
ideas and practices that have no clear link
with the Islamic past.
Problematic as well is the fact that
fundamentalism suggests a monolithic
movement, whereas one should really
speak of “fundamentalisms” since fundamentalist thought is diverse and its modes
of expression extremely varied – perhaps
nowhere more so than in the Middle East
and North Africa. Most important, to the
extent that Islamic fundamentalists do not
necessarily claim to have a political project
and do not necessarily enter the political
arena, the word “fundamentalism” is not
well-suited to analyzing those movements
that use Islamic referents to wage political
battles. To describe this phenomenon, and
to refer to hybrid ideologies that mix
concepts borrowed from the Islamic
manifestations of fundamentalism around
the globe, Islamic fundamentalism can be
seen as a reactive movement, driven by
individuals who have come to feel that their
faith faces a deadly threat to its survival,
and that it can only be saved through a
return to its original principles and values.
Two prominent students of religious
fundamentalism have noted that the
concept applies to “beleaguered believers”
who, when confronted with “the encroachment of outsiders who threaten to draw
[them] into a syncretistic, areligious, or
irreligious cultural milieu,” go back to their
faith’s basic doctrines and practices in an
effort to “preserve their distinctive identity
as a people or group.”3
Still, some analysts believe that the
expression “Islamic fundamentalism” is
inadequate, since the word “fundamentalism” originated in a cultural context –
American protestantism at the beginning of
the twentieth century – very removed from
Islam. Thus, the reasoning goes, the term
comes with certain connotations that may
be deeply misleading when applied to
Islam. For instance, what was supposed to
set Protestant fundamentalists apart from
other Protestants was their conviction that
the Bible was the true word of God and
that is should be understood literally.4 All
believing Muslims, however, are expected
to regard the Quran as the literal, infallible
Word of God; such a tenet lies at the very
core of Islam. In that respect, therefore,
all Muslims are “fundamentalists”: they
hold their holy book to be a verbatim
record of God’s revelations to Prophet
Muhammad. And yet most Muslims are
hardly “fundamentalists” in the sense of
believing that their behavior should be
guided exclusively by religious scriptures.
Nor do they assume that these scriptures
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DENOEUX: NAVIGATING POLITICAL ISLAM
tradition and ideas that are more distinctly
international political and economic order.
modern, scholars have come to use instead
For the same reason, those who have
the expressions “Islamism” or “political
sought to account for the demise of the
Islam” (see below).
Oslo peace process by, among other things,
There is, finally, another ground on
highlighting the “joint” opposition to that
which to question the notion that Islamic
process by Jewish and Muslim “fundamenactivism shares structural similarities or
talists,” insisting that these movements
“family resemblances” with, for instance,
have been “mirror images” of each other,
Christian and Jewish fundamentalisms, and, may confuse more than elucidate the
therefore, that it can best be explained
situation on the ground. In particular, they
through the framework of “comparative
fail to highlight that military occupation and
fundamentalisms.”5 Such an argument
the neocolonial exploitation of one side by
fails to take into account the critical
the other have been key forces behind the
differences in the political contexts within
rise of so-called “Muslim fundamentalism”
which these trends have emerged. For
in Palestine.6
one, most Christian and Jewish fundamentalist ideologies and movements have
SALAFISM (AL-SALAFIYYA)
developed within democratic political
Within the Islamic context, the tradition
environments, whereas one shared feature
that comes the closest to the western
of the political
concept of “fundasettings that have
mentalism” is what is
. . . military occupation and
witnessed the rise of
known as Salafism
the neocolonial exploitation
Islamist movements
(al-Salafiyya in
has been the lack of
Arabic), a current of
of one side by the other
real prospects for a
thought which
have
been
key
forces
behind
genuine, peaceful
emerged during the
the rise of so-called
alternation of power.
second half of the
Furthermore, to
nineteenth century.
“Muslim fundamentalism”
establish parallels
The word comes
in Palestine.
between Christian,
from al-Salaf, which
Jewish and Muslim
refers to the com“fundamentalisms” conceals the imbalance
panions of the Prophet Muhammad, and is
in power and resources between those
usually used as part of the expression alenvironments within which Jewish and
salaf al-salih, i.e., the “virtuous forefaChristian fundamentalisms have grown
thers.” Salafism urged believers to return
(the “Judeo-Christian” North) and those
to the pristine, pure, unadulterated form of
where Islamic activism has appeared. It
Islam practiced by Muhammad and his
also fails to reflect that a critical driving
companions. It rejected any practice (such
force of Islamic activism has been the
as Sufi rituals), belief (such as the belief in
questioning of this basic imbalance of
saints) or behavior (for example those
power, whereas neither Christian nor
anchored in customary law) not directly
supported by the Quran or for which there
Jewish fundamentalisms have challenged
was no precedent in Muhammad’s acts
explicitly the foundations of the existing
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MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
heresies, and castigated his contemporaries
for having reverted to a state of unbelief
and ignorance of God’s commandments.
Consequently, he stressed the need to
return to the monotheism that Islam had
once introduced in that desert society. But
he also went further than that, and strove
to eradicate from Islam anything that was
not consistent with a strict, literal interpretation of the Quran and the Sunna. What
eventually emerged was a particularly
puritanical, bland, ultra-orthodox and
forbidding interpretation of Islam, concerned, if not obsessed, with notions of
moral corruption and the need for purity.
To this day, Wahhabism remains characterized by its intolerance toward any perceived deviation from the dogmatic interpretation of Islam that it preaches.
Wahhabism would likely have remained a marginal doctrine within Islamic
thought had it not been for the alliance that
Abd al-Wahhab struck with the House of
Saud in 1745. From then on, the political
fortunes of the Saud family and the potential audience for Abd al-Wahhab’s ideas
were closely tied to each other. Ultimately,
when Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud succeeded in
unifying the tribes of Arabia under his
control and into what became the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia in 1932, Wahhabism
became the country’s state-sanctioned
ideology and code of behavior.
For some 40 years after that, however,
the audience and appeal of Wahhabism
remained for the most part confined to
Saudi Arabia. That situation began to
change following the 1973 oil boom.
Blessed with new riches, the Saudi regime
engaged in a major effort to spread
Wahhabi ideology overseas – partly out of
conviction, and partly to counter the appeal
of ideologies that it perceived as a threat to
and sayings. Salafi thinkers also refused
the idea that Muslims should accept blindly
the interpretations of religious texts developed by theologians over the centuries.
Instead, they insisted on the individual
believer’s right to interpret those texts for
himself or herself through the practice of
ijtihad (independent reasoning).7
Salafism did not develop as a monolithic
movement but rather as a broad philosophy,
a frame of mind. To this day, there is no
single Salafi ideology or organization.
Instead, since the late nineteenth century,
Salafism has expressed itself in a multiplicity of movements and currents of thought
that have reflected specific historical
circumstances and local conditions. Most
have been primarily intellectual-cultural
undertakings that generally have eschewed
the political arena. In the past two decades,
however, one particular brand of Salafi
ideology – the Saudi variant known as
Wahhabism – has known particular success, and it is to that specific expression of
Salafi thought which we now turn.
WAHHABISM
Wahhabism draws its name from an
eighteenth-century religious reformer
known as Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab
(1703-91) who preached in central Arabia.
Abd al-Wahhab was incensed by what he
saw as the laxity and moral corruption of
the society in which he lived. In his eyes,
that society had turned its back on Islam,
neglecting basic religious duties while
tolerating practices and beliefs which he
saw as unacceptable deviations from the
basic tenets of the faith. Idolatry, superstitions, the cult of saints and even the
veneration of trees and stones were indeed
ascendant in Arabia at the time. Abd alWahhab was determined to fight such
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DENOEUX: NAVIGATING POLITICAL ISLAM
its national security. Saudi money was
instrumental to the building and the operation of thousands of mosques, Islamic
centers and madrasas (religious schools)
from Lahore to London, and from Morocco
to Malaysia. There, the Wahhabi message
was presented to ever-expanding audiences. Following the Iranian revolution of
1979, the Saudi authorities also endeavored
to promote Wahhabi ideas as a counterweight to the new Iranian regime’s stated
goal of exporting its Shiite revolution
overseas. At the end of that same year,
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provided
new, unprecedented opportunities for Saudi
Arabia to spread Wahhabi views, especially in Pakistan. The Taliban phenomenon, which owes so much to Saudi
support, was born out of this process.
In the end, one is struck by the extent
to which a unique configuration of geological circumstances and world events led to
the unexpected, rapid expansion of a rather
sectarian branch of Islam which historically
had been on the fringes of Islamic civilization. The “accident” of oil wealth, the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and
America’s blessing for (or complacent
attitude toward) the Saudi regime’s militant
promotion of Wahhabism all combined to
give this minority quasi-sect within Islam a
level of influence entirely out of proportion
to what it could have achieved on its own.
political agenda (hence the expression
“political Islam,” which is usually seen as
synonymous with Islamism).
Typically, the Islamist project provides
a comprehensive critique of the existing
order, challenges it and aims to change it.
It addresses the social, political, economic
and cultural challenges faced by contemporary Muslim societies and claims to provide
solutions to them. It makes a more or less
sustained and persuasive effort to reflect
on what an “Islamic economy” or “Islamic
society” might look like. Islamism, in short,
is a form of instrumentalization of Islam by
individuals, groups and organizations that
pursue political objectives. It provides
political responses to today’s societal
challenges by imagining a future, the
foundations for which rest on reappropriated, reinvented concepts borrowed from
the Islamic tradition.
Islamism and modernity
A defining characteristic of Islamist
movements, organizations and ideologies is
their two-sided relation to modernity and
the West. On the one hand, at the very
heart of Islamist ideology lies a powerful,
comprehensive critique of the West and of
what Islamists see as the corrupting
political and cultural influence of the West
on Middle Eastern societies. The Islamists’ reliance on concepts drawn from the
Islamic tradition also indicates a desire to
break away from Western terminology.
On the other hand, Islamism is a decidedly
modern phenomenon in at least two critical
respects: the profile of its leaders and its
reliance on Western technology.
As far as the first of these two features is concerned, the cadres and ideologues of Islamist movements have been,
overwhelmingly, products of the modern,
“ISLAMISM” OR “POLITICAL
ISLAM”
Unlike “Salafism” and “fundamentalism,” the label “Islamism” is relatively
recent. It was coined during the 1970s to
refer to the rise of movements and ideologies drawing on Islamic referents – terms,
symbols and events taken from the Islamic
tradition – in order to articulate a distinctly
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MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
secular educational system. “Radical
professionals and businesspersons emIslamists,” for instance, are not usually
ployed in the modern sector of the
clerics but young, university-educated
economy – indeed often in the most
intellectuals who claim for themselves the
technologically advanced and outwardright to interpret the true meaning of
oriented segments of that sector. Overall,
religion (their actual knowledge of Islam is
therefore, what is noteworthy is the extent
typically sketchy). Most of them are
to which Islamist movements have drawn
graduates in engineering and the modern
their main activists from the “new middle
sciences, not in the humanities or theology.
class” that scholars in the 1960s had
Some have studied in Western Europe or
expected to be a major source of secularNorth America. For instance, two leading
ization and Westernization in Middle
Islamist thinkers, the Iranian Ali Shariati
Eastern societies.
(whose writings
Striking as
had the greatest
well is the
Islamist movements have drawn
influence on the
Islamists’ heavy
young generation
reliance on
their main activists from the
that participated in
“new middle class” that scholars Western technolthe Islamic
ogy (faxes,
in
the
1960s
had
expected
to
be
revolution) and
cassettes and,
a major source of secularization
the Sudanese
more recently, the
Hassan al-Turabi,
internet and
and Westernization in Middle
received their
cellular phones) in
Eastern
societies.
doctorates from
order to achieve
the Sorbonne in
their goals. In
Paris. In their twenties and thirties, the
many ways, Islamists have harnessed
cadres of radical Islamist movements
modern technology and Western inventions
typically belong to a “lumpen intelligento fight, or hold at bay, Western influences
tsia.” They are frustrated by the discrepand the cultural and social evils they see as
ancy between, on the one hand, their
associated with modernity. Thus, with their
relatively high level of educational achieve- choice of tools to disseminate their ideas
ment, and, on the other, their low social
and organize, radical Islamists have shown
status and dim prospects for upward
themselves quite capable of keeping up
mobility in countries characterized by poor
with advances in information and commueconomic performance and the dispropornication technologies. Consequently, the
tionate importance of social connections to
sophistication of the devices on which they
professional success. And if the leadership have drawn has been characterized by a
of Islamist movements is a product of
staggering improvement over the past
modernization, so are the foot soldiers, who quarter-century. Back in 1978, much was
often consist of recently urbanized masses,
made of the critical contribution that
lower-class youth and the downwardly
cassettes containing Khomeini’s sermons
mobile middle classes. As for the cadres
made to the success of the Iranian revoluof more “moderate” or “mainstream”
tion. Recorded in France, where the
Islamist movements, they usually consist of ayatollah had been granted political asylum,
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DENOEUX: NAVIGATING POLITICAL ISLAM
these tapes were subsequently distributed
throughout Iran, copied and played and
replayed in thousands of homes and
mosques. Similarly, in the mid-1990s, the
main group in the Islamist opposition to the
Saudi regime, the Committee for the
Defense of Legitimate Rights in Saudi
Arabia (CDLR), used its headquarters in
London to disseminate its virulent attacks
on the Saudi royal family through faxes,
tapes and the internet. From the mid1990s onward, numerous Islamist groups
began to develop their own websites.
Most dramatically, in the wake of the
September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers
and the Pentagon, U.S. intelligence worried
about the use of encryption technology by
members of Al Qaeda. Through their
mastery of encryption tools, the latter may
have been able to hide messages within
apparently innocuous e-mails, music files
and pictures sent instantaneously from one
continent to another. They also may have
been able to embed such messages in the
graphics or images found on certain
websites. Such a development underscores
the technological sophistication of the tools
now used by some radical Islamists to
communicate with each other undetected.
What is clear is that they are not behind
the times technologically.
• Politics lies at the heart of Islamism,
which ultimately has far more to do with
power than with religion. To Islamists,
Islam is more a political blueprint than a
faith, and the Islamist discourse is to a
large extent a political discourse in religious
garb. Thus, while fundamentalists are
typically concerned primarily with ideas
and religious exegesis, Islamists are actionoriented; they are preoccupied first and
foremost with changing their world. They
believe, in particular, that political action is
essential to the transformation of society
into a truly Islamic one. They aim to
exercise political power, and they are
extremely critical of governments which
they accuse of having turned their back on
Islam. By contrast, politics does not
feature prominently in Salafi thought.
Unlike Islamists, fundamentalists do not
claim to have a global, comprehensive
political program. More interested in
theology than politics, Salafists usually
refrain from challenging governments and
are generally reluctant to become involved
in the political fray. They shy away from
raising the issue of the political and religious legitimacy (or illegitimacy) of the
powers-that-be, whereas that issue is
perhaps the most prominent one on the
Islamists’ minds.
• Even though they constantly invoke
concepts drawn from the Islamic past,
Islamists are social and political activists
intent on building a new type of society. In
that respect, they are forward-looking,
whereas fundamentalists tend to be fixated
on an earlier, idealized era. Islamists
usually aspire to reshape people’s daily
lives according to a more or less clearly
defined political and cultural vision that
harks back to a mostly mythical, invented
Islamic past. While that vision draws on
Islamism versus fundamentalism
or Salafism
Though Islamism and fundamentalism
or Salafism share certain traits, they also
differ in several important respects. What
they have in common is an idealized view
of early Islamic history, a desire to restore
the original purity of the faith, and the call
for a return to a strict interpretation of the
Quran and the Sunna. However, they
clearly part ways on the following issues:
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MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
“virtuous.” Is it, as Islamists advocate,
through an Islamic revolution that will
create an environment in which implementation of the sharia becomes inevitable
because society itself has become more
genuinely Islamic? Or is it, as fundamentalists are prone to believe, by pressuring
individuals into abiding by certain moral and
behavioral codes based on the sharia,
which in turn ultimately and naturally will
lead to the establishment of an Islamic
state? Unlike fundamentalists, Islamists
fear that trying to impose Islamic law on a
society that has not yet become truly
Islamic may be doomed to fail, and may
even create new problems. In their eyes, it
is likely to lead to the spread of hypocrisy,
fake individual and collective displays of
piety, and glaring discrepancies between
public and private behavior – between who
individuals profess to be and who they
really are.
Similarly, whereas fundamentalists
typically oppose the idea of women playing
an active role in public life (arguing that it
goes against Islamic teachings and that it
will encourage moral corruption and laxity),
Islamists overall are far more open on the
issue. They usually support the education
of women. Unlike fundamentalists, who
tend to believe that the proper role of a
woman is at home raising children, many
Islamists have no problem with the idea of
women playing an active part in the public
and professional sphere, as long as the
latter is sex-segregated. Islamist organizations often include women’s sections, and
modern-educated women activists represent an important constituency for many
Islamist groups.9 In Iran and elsewhere,
women since the 1990s have been at the
forefront of efforts to develop a form of
“Islamic feminism” that blends Islam and
Islamic terms, symbols and events, it
infuses them with new meanings that are
typically alien to the actual historical and
current experiences of Muslims. Islamists
are engaged in a process of intellectual,
political and social engineering which,
through the familiar language of Islam,
aims to legitimize a thorough restructuring
of society and polity along lines that have
no precedent in history. Under the pretense of re-establishing an old order, what
is intended is the making of a new one.
• Fundamentalists are primarily concerned
with issues of morality and personal
behavior, and/or with theological issues,
while Islamists, through the capture of the
state or the Islamization of society, aim to
bring about a radical transformation of
political, social and economic relations
within modern society.
• Islamists and fundamentalists also differ
in their attitudes toward the sharia (Islamic law) and women.8 Fundamentalists
would like to see a strict implementation of
the sharia and argue that all laws should be
based exclusively on it. To them, applying
Islamic law should be a priority since it is
the most reliable way of making society
more truly Islamic. And whenever political
and social conditions are not “ripe” for an
immediate application of the sharia, fundamentalists believe that working toward a
gradual, incremental Islamization of laws
and mores should be the driving force of
their action. Islamists, too, favor an
Islamization of laws, but to them full
implementation of the sharia makes sense
only after a genuinely Islamic order has
been created (through the capture of
political power). In short, the line dividing
fundamentalists and Islamists on this issue
revolves around the most effective way of
making individuals more (Islamically)
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modernity, often in an effort to secure
further gains for women in the public
sphere. In those efforts, they usually have
faced considerable resistance from organized Islamic fundamentalist interests and
power groups.
• As a rule, fundamentalist ideas have a
much greater chance of finding a receptive
audience among men of religion (ulama)
than is the case for Islamist views. After
all, Islamists are far more likely to be
engineers, physicians or agronomists than
clerics. Unlike clerics, they did not go
through formal religious training (and
consequently know little about Islamic
jurisprudence), and their roots lie in the
modern society that produced them, not in
the relatively insulated religious institution.
Most important, the official citadels of
fundamentalist thought and power are
usually closely tied to the political authorities and consequently very ill-disposed
toward the “subversive” ideas of Islamists.
Thus, for instance, the religious establishment in both Saudi Arabia and Egypt has
been used by these countries’ respective
governments to rebut the arguments of the
Islamists on religious grounds.
In several respects, the typical modern
Islamist intellectual is even anti-clerical.
Across the region, Islamists have criticized
the subservience of the religious establishment to the political authorities. In a handful
of cases, radical Islamist militants have
targeted senior clerics they saw as puppets
of the government. Even in Iran, where a
small segment of the Shiite clergy played a
leading role in the triumph of the Islamic
revolution, radical clerics initially formed only
one rather small component of a broadbased revolutionary coalition. The core
activists within that coalition were universityeducated lay Islamists, not products of the
country’s religious seminaries. Moreover,
Iran’s revolutionary clerics, often former
students of Khomeini, were themselves only
a minority within the religious establishment.
By contrast, the most senior and respected
clerics (such as Ayatollah Shariatmadari)
were decidedly opposed to Khomeini and his
militant, radical interpretation of Islam.
Ultimately, the clerics who, after the triumph
of the revolution, rose to the top of the
political pyramid and were given leadership
positions within the religious institution itself
were not those best known for their religious
scholarly expertise, but those who had the
best revolutionary credentials. Significantly,
in a famous statement issued in 1989,
Khomeini noted that in case of conflict
between “the logic of the revolution” and
strict respect for the sharia, the former
should take precedence over the latter. That
was his way of saying that, in his view,
Iran’s revolution had been an Islamist
phenomenon, not a fundamentalist one.
FROM ISLAMISM TO
NEOFUNDAMENTALISM
The line dividing Islamists from fundamentalists should not be overdrawn. Some
scholars have argued that from the mid1980s onward, Islamism began to drift into
“neofundamentalism” – a trend which, in
the view of these analysts, became even
more pronounced through the 1990s.10
Several critical features distinguish
“neofundamentalists” from “Islamists”:
their greater emphasis on mores, “virtue”
and “purity”; their less exclusive focus on
politics and different approach to political
action; and their more rigid views on
women and the sharia.
Unlike Islamists, neofundamentalists
are less concerned with the immediate
seizure of political power than with grass-
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MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
roots action aimed at the moral regeneraOne may say that the primary target of the
tion of the individual and the gradual
1970s generation of Islamists was the
transformation of society into a more
“infidel ruler” who was denounced for
“Islamic” one. It is not that neofundahaving betrayed Islam, sold out to the
mentalists always eschew politics. On the
West, and allowed society to retrogress to
contrary, they do enter the political arena,
a pre-Islamic state of unbelief. In comseeking representation and influence in
parison, the main concerns of
institutions ranging from parliaments to
neofundamentalists are the decline in
professional syndicates. But they see the
religious practice and the spread of unestablishment of a truly Islamic society as
Islamic mores and moral decay (drug
a long-term goal that involves the slow,
addiction, alcohol consumption, popular
step-by-step return to strict Islamic pracforms of entertainment, sex outside martices by individuals, a goal which itself
riage, etc.).
necessitates
Although neoconstant efforts at
fundamentalists
Islamists had been unsuccessful
education, persuaare distinct from
sion, preaching,
fundamentalists,
in their bid to alter significantly
proselytizing and
they share with
the
political
landscape
of
Middle
lobbying the
Islamists some
Eastern and North African
authorities. To
important sociothe Islamists of
economic characsocieties. Islamists had been
the 1970s, the
teristics. Like
repressed, cowed or co-opted.
capture of the
Islamists, they
state would open
often are products
the door automatically to the establishment
of modern education and are far more
of a truly Islamic order. By contrast,
likely to be involved in the professions than
neofundamentalists have regarded political
is the case of fundamentalists. Furtheraction primarily as one of several means
more, unlike fundamentalists but like
toward moral and spiritual reform, both at
Islamists, neofundamentalists espouse
the individual and the societal level.
political action. Unlike Islamists, however,
Similarly, the imposition of the sharia
their approach to politics places far more
occupies a central role in the program of
hope in grass-roots activism than in the
neofundamentalists (and of Islamistsprospect for an immediate capture of the
turned-neofundamentalists), whereas it
state, and their program tends to revolve
was not that critical to the first generation
almost exclusively on the application of the
of Islamists during the 1970s. Neofundasharia.
mentalists are also more conservative on
Saudi support for a broad range of
the issue of women’s role in society.
neofundamentalist movements from
Overall, they are more preoccupied than
Algeria to Pakistan sustained the trend
the Islamists with issues of morality, and
toward a transformation of Islamism into
with the need for cleansing souls and
neofundamentalism. In retrospect, the
societies which they see as having been
Saudi authorities were remarkably sucthoroughly corrupted by Western influence. cessful in redirecting some of the energies
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DENOEUX: NAVIGATING POLITICAL ISLAM
originally harnessed by Islamism in the
direction of a neofundamentalism that was
much more consistent with the rigid
Wahhabi ethos and the narrow interests of
the Saud family than had been the case
with the initial, revolutionary Islamist
impulse of the 1970s. What some analysts
refer to as “the failure of political Islam”
was critical as well.11 By the mid-to-late
1980s, indeed, Islamists had been unable to
seize power in any single Arab country.
Their earlier ambition of riding an Islamist
wave that would sweep across the region
had failed to materialize. More generally,
Islamists had been unsuccessful in their bid
to alter significantly the political landscape
of Middle Eastern and North African
societies. The Iranian revolution had been
contained. Elsewhere, Islamists had been
repressed, cowed or co-opted. Though
they sometimes had proven to be a force to
be reckoned with, Islamists had neither
brought down regimes nor changed the
basic logic of Arab politics. As for Islamist
thought, it had shown itself to be relatively
scant and bland, often unpersuasive and
flawed to even sympathetic observers.
Failing to differentiate between the
desirable and the possible, Islamism, it
seemed, had promised more than it had
delivered. It had not measured up to the
great hopes which its supporters had
originally placed in it when it had first
emerged, filling the ideological vacuum
created by the death of pan-Arab dreams
on the battlefields of the 1967 war. According to proponents of the “failure of
political Islam” thesis, once it became clear
that the original Islamist project based on
the revolutionary seizure of power in order
to “Islamize” society from the top down
had failed, a new generation of Islamist
militants turned to a strategy aimed instead
at Islamizing society and politics from the
bottom up. In the process, they became
less “Islamist” and more “neofundamentalist.” The dream of an Islamic
revolution and of a quick, relatively easy
seizure of the state having been shattered,
neofundamentalists refocused efforts on
the conquest of society through grass-roots
activism and the infiltration or takeover of
the institutions of civil society.
The Taliban phenomenon does not fit
easily into any of the categories discussed
in this paper; it is really a product of the
unique environment that gave rise to it in
the early 1990s in Kandahar. But, with its
emphasis on a literal interpretation of the
Quran and its forced imposition of a
particularly rigid moral order, the Taliban
movement may be seen as an extreme
manifestation of neofundamentalism.
Indeed, this particularly obscurantist and
exclusionary form might even be described as “neofundamentalism gone mad.”
Such a label seems warranted by the
movement’s oppression of women, its
hostility to any form of entertainment and,
more generally, its repressive rules and
commandments. The latter, one should
note, often had less to do with the sharia
than with the Pashtun tribal code of
behavior and were also shaped by the
austere, parochial, largely illiterate and for
the most part totally male environment
from which so many Taliban leaders
hailed.12
“RADICAL ISLAM” OR “RADICAL
ISLAMS”?
The two separate meanings of the
adjective “radical” – first, growing from a
root and, second, being politically extreme
– define the essence of “radical Islam.”13
Consequently, radical Islamic groups can
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be described as politico-religious movements which, through extreme methods,
strive to bring about drastic sociopolitical
changes based on a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islamic doctrine that claims to
go back to the fundamental meaning and
message of the faith. In this context,
violence is legitimized as a way of bringing
down a social and political order deemed
un-Islamic, and of replacing it with one that
will restore Islam’s original purity.
Understood in this fashion, the expression “radical Islam” sheds light on what
motivates adherents of movements said to
fall under that label. Yet one also must
remain aware of the limitations of such an
expression. Just as we have come to
appreciate the enormous diversity of
phenomena grouped under the label of
“Islamic resurgence,” it is perhaps more
accurate to speak of “radical Islams” than
of “radical Islam.” For instance, one
might fruitfully distinguish between radical
Sunni and radical Shiite movements. They
have their own separate political and
intellectual histories, distinct trajectories
over the past two decades, and different
“founding fathers” (the Egyptian Sayyid
Qutb and the Pakistani Mawdudi in the
case of Sunnis, Ayatollah Khomeini and to
some extent Shaikh Fadlallah in Lebanon in
the case of Shiite Islam). Similarly, the
forces that fuel radical Islamic groups and
the reasons that prompt individuals (usually
young men) to join them vary greatly from
one country to the other. Those who have
drifted into these movements primarily
because of their aversion to Western forms
of modernity may have little in common
with Palestinians driven into Hamas cells
because of their hatred of Israel, the
occupation of Palestinian land, and the
accumulated feelings of anger and humilia-
tion created by Israeli policies in the West
Bank and Gaza. And in their outlook and
motives, both types of militants differ in
turn from those involved in the most violent
groups of Algeria’s Islamic insurgency,
which emerged out of the specific context
created by a bankrupt post-colonial state
and a botched democratization experiment.
It is also critical to distinguish between
the vast majority of radical Islamic groups,
which have had a primarily nationalist and
country-specific agenda (as has been the
case of Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in
Palestine and the Gamaa Islamiyya in
Egypt), and the more recent transnational
type of radical Islamic network embodied
in Al Qaeda. The former type’s struggles
have been for the most part contained
within a particular territory, and their goals
have been limited to it. By contrast, the
latter type has been transnational in its
goals, recruitment patterns and modes of
operation. It has aimed to wage jihad on
a global scale, not merely within a given
country (though Bin Laden himself appears
to have been driven primarily by objectives
having to do with Saudi Arabia: ridding the
kingdom of American military forces, and
more generally of American influence, as
well as overthrowing the ruling family). It
has recruited most of its cadres among a
transnational, uprooted intelligentsia of
young Arabs studying in the West, while its
foot soldiers also have been drawn from a
multiplicity of Arab countries. Its intended
audience is not primarily the population of a
single country, but the entire umma (community of believers). And, ultimately, its
target is not just one government, not even
that of the United States. While it has
identified America as its main enemy, it
tends to portray its actions not merely as a
war against a well-defined, narrowly
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DENOEUX: NAVIGATING POLITICAL ISLAM
circumscribed opponent, but rather as a
cosmic struggle against evil forces bent on
Islam’s destruction. The United States is
singled out to a large extent because it is
the source of so many of these forces, and
because American power has been the
main instrument through which they are
exercised (as is the case, for instance, of
globalization).
justify their massacres of civilians). But
for most jihadist-Salafi organizations (most
prominently the transnational Al Qaeda),
the main enemy is the United States. It is
singled out because of its support for Israel
(and therefore Israeli control over the alAqsa mosque in Jerusalem), because of its
alleged “crimes” against Muslims (including the sanctions on Iraq), because of its
support for Middle Eastern regimes and
leaders that have betrayed Islam and
oppress Muslims, and (the decisive factor
insofar as Bin Laden is concerned) because of its military presence in Saudi
Arabia near the holy mosques.
The increasing success of jihadistSalafi ideology during the 1980s and,
especially, the 1990s stemmed from the
merging of two trends. One was the
spread throughout the region of Salafineofundamentalist worldviews, which
themselves owed much of their growing
audience to the financial support of Gulf
regimes, especially Saudi Arabia, and Gulfbased Salafi organizations. The second
critical factor was the war in Afghanistan,
which radicalized many Arab Salafis and
indeed had the effect of converting to the
cause of jihad an entire segment of the
transnational Salafi movement. To be sure,
many groups involved in the loose “Salafi
international” continued to refrain from
direct involvement in politics. Others, while
politically active, relied on legal and peaceful means to achieve their goals. They
avoided direct criticism of existing regimes
and rejected the resort to violence and
terrorism. However, galvanized by the
success of the Afghan mujahideen, more
Arab Salafis came to believe in the need
for jihad. Al Qaeda, created in 1988,
emerged and developed within that context.
By the time the last Soviet soldier left
JIHADIST SALAFISM
“Jihadist Salafi” is a label that is
sometimes applied to a nebula of “second
generation” radical Islamist movements
that emerged during the 1980s and rose in
influence during the 1990s. The war in
Afghanistan (1980-89) served as the
incubator for this explosive mixture of
Salafi outlook and call to violence.
“Jihadist Salafis” embrace a strict, literal
interpretation of Islam, but combine it with
an emphasis on jihad, understood here as
holy war. To them, jihad becomes the
prime instrument through which the
“Salafi” desire to “return” to the original
message of Islam will be turned into
reality.14
The prime targets of jihadist-Salafi
organizations vary according to the country
and the organization involved. Some
concentrate their attacks on the “infidel
regimes” at the helm of the country in
which they operate. Such regimes are
denounced as Muslim in name only and for
having become completely subservient to
the West. Jihadist Salafis also may engage
in random violence against an entire
society seen as having reverted to a state
of pre-Islamic ignorance (of God’s commandments), and rejected for failing to side
with “true Muslims” in their struggle
against the regime (a rationale invoked by
some radical Islamic groups in Algeria to
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MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
Afghanistan in February 1989, Arab
outlook, as noted earlier, was not found
militants who had made the trip to Afghani- among the original Islamist militants of the
stan to join the jihad against the Soviet
1970s, who were more modernist and
Union had convinced themselves that they
future-oriented. Second, the violence of
had been the primary reason behind the
the earlier generation of radical Islamists
Soviet defeat. Emboldened, they felt that
was targeted almost exclusively at the
the experience of the Afghan jihad could
“unbelieving” ruler, government and senior
now be duplicated successfully elsewhere.
officials (including, occasionally, senior
Besides, in the wake of the Soviet withmembers of the religious establishment) of
drawal, these “Arab Afghans” were in
the countries in which these groups opersearch of a new cause – or, rather, of new
ated. That is no longer the case with
horizons to which the cause of the jihad
jihadist Salafis, who have sought to export
could be brought. Thousands of these
jihad to new settings, identified new
battle-hardened
enemies, and tend to
fighters began to
see jihad as a global
In
short,
unlike
so
many
return home, where,
struggle that knows
jihadist Salafis, the Taliban
as in Algeria and
no borders.
Egypt, they were to
The emphasis on
had no global agenda and no
play a key role in the
a literal interpretareal interest in international
radical Islamist
tion of the Quran,
politics and the world
insurgencies that
combined with the
beyond Afghanistan.
broke out in 1992.
embrace of jihad,
And when those
are features shared
insurgencies reached
by the Taliban
a dead end in 1997-98, Al Qaeda was
movement and the jihadist-Salafi internathere to redirect the energies of many
tional. Both phenomena coalesced around
radical Islamists toward the global struggle
the same time, in the same Pakistanoagainst the United States.
Afghan region. Both, though in different
As the preceding account makes clear,
ways, were a legacy of the Soviet-Afghan
several features separate “jihadist Salafis”
war. They stemmed from the unresolved
from traditional Salafis, from the radical
tensions, internal disorder, devastation and
Islamists who preceded them, and from the continued regional competition left by that
Taliban. Unlike traditional Salafis, jihadist
conflict. These common characteristics,
Salafis embrace violence and the cause of
however, should not obscure critical
jihad. Jihadist Salafis are also distinct from differences. For instance, unlike jihadist
the earlier generation of Islamist radicals in Salafis, the Taliban were exclusively a
two respects. First, their Salafi worldview
product of the madrasa system, and they
implies adherence to an orthodox, literalist
were heavily influenced by the deobandi
interpretation of Islam, as well as an
tradition (an Islamic revivalist movement
implicit or explicit belief in the need for a
born among the Muslims of India in the
degree of societal coercion in order to
latter third of the nineteenth century). In
ensure that individuals abide by strict
addition, when their movement emerged in
“Islamic rules.” Such a fundamentalist
1994, the Taliban had very circumscribed
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DENOEUX: NAVIGATING POLITICAL ISLAM
goals: restoring peace, order and security
within Afghanistan and creating a new
order consistent with the sharia. They had
no inclination to engage in a sustained
effort to spread their version of Islam
beyond that country.15 In short, unlike so
many jihadist Salafis, they had no global
agenda and no real interest in international
politics and the world beyond Afghanistan.
Furthermore, the “typical” Taliban – a
poor, largely uneducated Pahstun of
peasant origin, born in a Pakistani refugee
camp and with extremely limited horizons –
was strikingly different from the “typical”
jihadist-Salafi Arab: rather cosmopolitan,
well-traveled and often well-educated. For
that matter, Mullah Omar and Osama bin
Laden were strange bedfellows. The
marriage of convenience that they struck in
1996-97, which would prove to be the
undoing of the Taliban regime, was certainly not a natural pairing. It was a
coalition of interests and circumstances
that could not have been anticipated.
Omar, born into a family of poor, landless
peasants, was a village mullah who did not
know anything about the world and was
not interested in it, even as he founded his
Taliban movement. Bin Laden, the privileged child of one of the richest Saudi selfmade men, grew up in a Westernized
environment and even had spent time
during his childhood in such countries as
Sweden and Great Britain. By the mid1990s, he was at the head of a multinational terrorist network with a global reach,
one that aimed at striking at the very
centers of America’s international power.
By comparison, at that time, Mullah
Omar’s goal was still limited to overthrowing the corrupt government in Kabul. It
would take at least two more years before
the village cleric would be converted to the
internationalist agenda of his benefactor.
Even then, the two men could not have
remained more different. The reclusive
Omar was ill at ease in public and avoided
all contact with foreign journalists. By
contrast, his Saudi “guest,” a master at
manipulating symbols and poses, was
relentless in his use of modern means of
communication to disseminate his message.
“RADICAL ISLAMISTS” VERSUS
“MODERATE ISLAMISTS”
The category “radical Islam” usually
presupposes the existence of another type
of Islamist movements, variously referred
to as “moderate,” “mainstream” or
“pragmatic.” Indeed, students of Islamism
have stressed the importance of differentiating between the “radical fringe,” which
represents only a minority of Islamists and
operates underground, and the broader
Islamist mainstream, which has a much
larger constituency and is often allowed or
tolerated by the authorities. The differences between “radical Islamists” and
“moderate Islamists” are said to boil down
to the following.
• Radicals advocate and legitimize the use
of violence for political ends, while moderates condemn it.
• The radicals’ project is a revolutionary
one aiming at the seizure of power in order
to establish a new Islamic order. By
contrast, the moderates are said to favor a
legalist, incremental approach that relies on
personal conversion, compromise and the
force of example. Moderates seek not to
overthrow the system, but to transform it
from within through a pragmatic, step-bystep process that focuses on persuasion of
the population and lobbying the authorities.
• Because moderates aim to change the
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MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
system progressively from below, they rely
heavily on social and charitable activities.
Grass-roots activism, therefore, is critical
to their strategy. It is designed to bring
about a gradual Islamization of society
from below, and to convince the population
that “Islam is the way,” that there can be
concrete “Islamic” solutions to the social
and economic ills faced by Middle Eastern
societies. This is not to say that moderates
eschew the political arena. On the contrary, whenever they are given the chance,
they actively participate in electoral
contests. But their approach is less
exclusively concerned with political power
than that of the radicals. To moderates,
winning hearts and souls is at least as
important as gaining representation in state
institutions. By contrast, the radicals
typically place far more emphasis on
politics, specifically on the capture of the
state. They do not agree to play by the
rules of regimes and societies that they
denounce for having turned their backs on
Islam. Unlike moderates, who believe that
society and the individual can be reformed
gradually, radicals argue that society can
be purified only if power is seized. In
several respects, their strategy follows a
Leninist approach. It envisions the creation of a small, well-organized “vanguard”
party led by committed, professional
Islamist revolutionaries who will overthrow
existing governments and then use state
power to restructure society from above,
along “Islamic” lines.
• Radicals reject democracy. They do not
believe in sovereignty of the people, but in
the sovereignty of God (hakimiyya), and
cannot accept that the latter would take a
back seat to the former. In their view, the
sharia – which they see as God’s will
regarding how human society ought to be
organized and how it should manage its
affairs – must take precedence over the
will of the majority. It also should determine what is the “rightful” place of women
and minorities in an Islamic society (which,
to democrats, means the legitimation of
state-sanctioned discrimination against
minorities and women). By contrast,
moderates are said to believe in the
compatibility of Islam and democracy.
They often claim to find precedents for
democratic principles in such Islamic
concepts as shura (consultation) and ijma
(consensus). Most important, they assert
(with varying degrees of emphasis and
credibility) that if they were to come to
power they would respect democratic
rules, abide by the will of the majority as
reflected in elections, and protect human
rights and civil liberties as well as the
pluralistic nature of society.
How valid is the distinction between
“moderates” and “radicals”?
Differentiating between “extremist”
and “mainstream” Islamists has the merit
of drawing attention to the enormous
diversity of organizations that seek to
change their society by using vocabulary
and ideals drawn from the Islamic tradition.
It underscores that Islamism is not a
monolithic movement, but a complex,
multifaceted phenomenon that expresses
itself through groups that differ considerably in their strategies and objectives.16
Those who stress the importance of
distinguishing between “moderates” and
“radicals” are usually intimately familiar
with the societies they study and with the
“Islamic resurgence” in particular.
Some analysts, however, have questioned the validity of differentiating between moderates and radicals. They note
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that (1) actual Islamist groups do not
necessarily fall neatly into either of these
ideal-type categories; (2) the line between
both categories is actually less clearly
drawn than is sometimes suggested; and
(3) movements frequently change their
identity over time, becoming radicalized or
more “mainstream” as a result of the
evolving sets of incentives, rewards and
deterrents with which their environments
present them. More specifically, one may
summarize as follows the arguments of
those who caution against placing too much
faith in the radicals-versus-moderates
mode of analysis.17
to bide their time. They may share the
radicals’ basic agenda, while being more
pragmatic and realistic regarding their
ability to advance such an agenda given the
powerful forces they confront.
• What if the moderates succeed in their
strategy of Islamizing society from below?
Will they then not have paved the way for
the establishment of an Islamic state,
which is the radicals’ goal? And if such a
state is established, will there be space for
dissenters, secularists, women’s-rights
activists and pluralism? Some analysts
even go so far as to claim that the moderates pose a more insidious threat, and
therefore a greater one, than the radicals.
Through their community-oriented activities
• In the end, no matter how divided they
and because of the freedom of maneuver
are over strategies, tactics and methods,
that they sometimes are granted by the
both extremists and moderates share the
goal of establishing a state governed by the authorities, they are progressively subverting, from within, the nominally secular
sharia, one in which religious law will be
systems in which they
the law of the land.
operate. Ultimately,
When one focuses on
Many analysts have
the argument goes,
their fundamental
they will be able to
convictions, their most
argued that the rise of
take over that system
cherished values, and
radical Islam under
without a fight.
the kind of society and
President Sadat (1970-81)
• A related argument
political order they
was
fueled
in
part
by
the
is that the gradual
aspire to create,
Islamization of public
moderates have far
Egyptian president’s
discourse and society
more in common with
efforts to use religion as a
produced by the
radicals than they do
counterweight
to
Nasserist
moderates, or by the
with Western-style
courting of “Islamist
democrats.
and leftist influence.
moderates” by the
• One should not take
authorities, may over
the moderates’
time create an environment in which
rhetoric at face value. On issues such as
extremism can flourish. Pakistan illustrates
the use of violence, the legitimacy of a
this scenario. Beginning with the adminisdemocratic order, human rights and pluraltration of General Zia ul-Haq (1977-88),
ism, the moderates’ real positions may be
the state strove to appease and co-opt
at significant variance with their public
religious parties, Muslim clerics and
statements. Moderates may be merely
Islamist intellectuals. It Islamized law and
more patient than the radicals, more willing
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MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
infused its discourse with Islamic vocabulary and symbols. It turned a blind eye,
indeed even encouraged, connections
between Islamist groups and the militaryintelligence apparatus. It granted “mainstream Islamist parties” and “religious
intellectuals” unprecedented freedom of
operation, while encouraging the proliferation of religious schools and organizations.
It brought Islamists into the inner circles of
power, at the higher echelons of the civil
service and the military and intelligence
agencies. And it used extremist Islamist
groups as instruments of its foreign policy,
both in Afghanistan and in Indian-controlled
Kashmir.
That policy now has come back to
haunt President Musharraf, who himself
has longstanding connections to some
Islamists and seized power in October
1999 with the blessing of many of them.
After all, the 1999 coup that brought down
the elected civilian government of Nawaz
Sharif was orchestrated and carried out by
the military high command, in which proIslamist elements were dominant, and it
received the enthusiastic support of the
country’s Islamist parties. Musharraf’s
recent policy U-turn has been an implicit
admission of the bankruptcy and
unsustainability of previous policies.
Certainly, his recent crackdown on violent
Islamist groups was prompted by the war
in Afghanistan, direct U.S. pressure and
mounting tensions with India (especially in
the wake of the attack on the Indian
Parliament in mid-December 2001). But
these events may merely have precipitated
the day of reckoning for Pakistan’s ruler.
It already had become clear that complacency toward Islamism had bred religious
extremism at all levels of society, that it
had resulted in rising and increasingly
bloody sectarian clashes between the
country’s Shiite and Sunni populations, and,
more generally, that it had contributed to
the spread of a culture of violence throughout the country and indeed in the entire
region. The state’s handling of political
Islam had seriously damaged Pakistan’s
international image while dangerously
building up tensions with India. It also
raised the prospect of a religious takeover
of the state by militant religious elements –
one that presumably would be facilitated by
the well-known and increasingly visible
connections between the military-security
apparatus and extremist religious groups,
and between the latter and the criminal
underworld.
Pakistan’s case is certainly not unique.
Many analysts have argued that the rise of
radical Islam under President Sadat (197081) was fueled in part by the Egyptian
president’s efforts to use religion as a
counterweight to Nasserist and leftist
influence, and by his release from jail of
members of the “mainstream Muslim
Brotherhood” in the early 1970s. More
recently, the Egyptian government’s efforts
to co-opt Islamic rhetoric, and the tolerance the Mubarak regime has shown
toward the spread of fundamentalist views
throughout society, are widely seen as
having contributed to rising anti-Coptic
violence and religious intolerance. Likewise, in Indonesia, the Islamization of
political discourse during the rule of
President Suharto (1966-98) has been
blamed for having contributed to growing
communal tensions and the development of
radical Islamist movements over the past
several years.
• Specific Islamist movements labelled as
either “moderate” or “radical” may in fact
exhibit characteristics that do not lend
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themselves to such easy classifications.
Often that is because within a single
Islamist movement, “moderate” and
“radical” wings coexist (more or less
easily). Consider the Islamic Salvation
Front (FIS), which won the December
1991 parliamentary elections in Algeria,
before the military cancelled the results of
the elections on January 11, 1992, and put
an end to the democratic process. The FIS
was frequently described at the time as a
“moderate Islamist party.” Its leader,
Abbasi Madani, spoke the language of
pluralism, democracy, and respect for the
constitution and legality. His core support
was among Algeria’s religiously oriented
middle classes. But the FIS also featured
an influential radical wing headed by
Madani’s second-in-command, Ali Belhaj.
Belhaj, who enjoyed a significant following
among Algeria’s poor and disenfranchised,
spoke a far more radical language. He
was explicitly hostile to democracy, which
he had denounced repeatedly as an alien
concept, a western evil and a heresy.
Similar tensions can be found among many
other Islamist groups. Hamas’s leadership,
for instance, has long been torn between
“insiders” (based in the West Bank and
Gaza) and “outsiders” (exiled leaders). On
the two key issues of confrontation with
Israel and attitude toward the Palestinian
Authority, insiders were always far more
moderate than outsiders, more aware of
the constraints on Hamas and the limits of
its power, and more prone to engage in
conciliation and compromise (at least until
the recent radicalization produced by the
general deterioration of the situation in
Palestine).
• Describing a specific Islamist movement
as either “radical” or “moderate” may also
be misleading because, in practice, the
frontier between “radical” and “moderate”
Islamism is often elusive or porous.
(1) Most Islamist movements are
divided into competing tendencies that are
themselves located at different points along
a radical-to-moderate axis. Therefore,
where the movement as a whole stands on
the continuum depends largely on the
changing balance of power between
“moderate” and “radical” tendencies within
it, as well as by the shifting political environment that often determines the evolution
of that balance.
(2) Islamist movements generally
described as radical may also be capable of
engaging in the give-and-take of democratic
politics, as Hizballah deputies have done in
Lebanon’s parliament since 1992. Armed
resistance to occupation does not preclude
pragmatic, legalistic action in other arenas.
Similarly, since its founding in 1988, Hamas
has behaved in a manner that contrasts
sharply with the widespread but misleading
image of it as a dogmatic, ideologicallydriven movement that is not amenable to
the kind of cost-benefit calculations associated with pluralistic politics. In reality,
Hamas has shown far more flexibility than
it is usually given credit for. It has responded in a very pragmatic manner to
changing political circumstances and
adjusted its rhetoric and behavior accordingly. It has not let itself become a prisoner
of its past rhetoric. In its attitude toward
Israel, the peace process and the Palestinian Authority, it has shown itself capable of
taking into account new opportunities and
constraints as they have arisen.18
(3) Islamist movements are not frozen
in time as either radical or moderate.
Radical Islamist movements can moderate
their attitude over time, while mainstream
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MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. IX, NO. 2, JUNE 2002
Islamists can be radicalized. Such evolutions largely reflect changing political
conditions and the shifting sets of opportunities and constraints that they create for
Islamist movements, as well as the evolving
balance of power between “radicals” and
“moderates” within these movements. For
instance, Algeria’s FIS experienced a sharp
radicalization following the military coup of
January 1992, which discredited moderates
within it while appearing to vindicate those
radicals who had denounced the democratic process as a sham and warned that
the military would never allow Islamists to
win a free and fair election. Conversely,
during the 1990s, Lebanon’s Hizballah was
able to change its image from terrorist,
revolutionary organization to mainstream
political party. It publicly dropped its goal
of creating an Islamic republic and instead
accepted Lebanon’s multiconfessional
system. In the Chamber of Deputies, its
representatives showed themselves to be
pragmatic, savvy politicians. By behaving
responsibly and following the rules of
legislative politics, they contributed to a
marked improvement in the general perception of Hizballah, both within and
outside of Lebanon. Israel’s withdrawal
from south Lebanon in May 2000 created
new incentives for Hizballah to complete its
transformation from guerrilla organization
to political machine. Having lost a major
trump card (its role as a vanguard of the
Lebanese resistance to Israeli occupation)
but also basking in the glow of its victory
over Israel, Hizballah was expected to
redirect its energies inward, focusing on
broadening its political base by addressing
the practical concerns of an electorate
weary of war and politics-as-usual. The
reality has been more nuanced: while
Hizballah has redoubled its effort to gain
political ground through savvy media
campaigns and skillful positioning, it has not
abandoned armed activities against Israel.
In so doing, the organization has shown that
pragmatic, mainstream behavior on domestic issues can go hand in hand with more
aggressive, militant stances on foreignpolicy questions, especially those seen as
threats to national security and sovereignty,
or as matters of pan-Arab solidarity.
Though less clearly drawn than
Hizballah’s, the cases of Egypt’s and
Algeria’s radical Islamist groups are also
revealing. In Egypt, following a failed
Islamist insurgency that lasted from 1992
until 1997, key members of the Gamaa
Islamiyya called, from jail, for a unilateral
cessation of violence against the state and
subsequently asked permission to establish
a political party (a request that was turned
down by the authorities). Though exiled
political leaders condemned this new policy,
and while many observers saw it as more a
tactical decision than a genuine and sincere
change of strategy and approach, other
analysts concluded that the new attitude of
former Gamaa activists represented a
fundamental shift in their ideology. In
Algeria, too, leaders of the Islamic rebellion
concluded in 1997 that the policies followed
by radical Islamists had been self-defeating
and had alienated society. Consequently,
they called for a unilateral ceasefire.
Unlike in Egypt, however, a large segment
of the Islamist tendency was allowed to
take part in the political process, and
several of its key leaders even endorsed
the candidacy of Abdelaziz Bouteflika,
elected president in April 1999.
(4) The fluid nature of the frontier
between extremist and moderate Islamist
groups is also evident when supposedly
“mainstream” Islamists refuse to disavow
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unambiguously the violence of radical
groups, or disavow it publicly while privately adopting a more ambivalent stance.
Similarly, there may be close personal
relationships and ideological affinities
between radical Islamists and those
affiliated with more moderate tendencies.
While moderates may disagree with the
methods of the extremists, they may share
some of the same ultimate objectives,
including the establishment of a state based
on the sharia. After all, the social and
political order that “jihadist Salafis” seek to
establish is not significantly different from
that espoused by more quietist Salafis.
Such shared outlooks can generate solidarities that transcend disagreements over
particular tactics and strategies. Significantly, throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
jihadist Salafis received generous financial
support from wealthy, reform-oriented
Salafi contributors in the Gulf.
(5) Radical Islamist ideologies often
trace their roots to mainstream Islamist
worldviews, and extremist Islamist movements often have developed out of moderate ones. Consider for instance the
forebear of all Islamist groups in the
Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood
(MB), created in Egypt in 1928 by a
schoolteacher named Hassan al-Banna.
The MB is usually described as a “mainstream organization.” Originally, it was
intended merely as a movement for
spiritual and moral reform, and its emphasis
was less on politics than on charitable
activities and religious education. Yet, as it
expanded during the 1930s, and as it
became active on the Egyptian political
scene, the MB also became host to a
variety of more militant tendencies. Some
broke off from the MB and created their
own organizations. But within the MB
itself, a secret paramilitary wing was
formed in the late 1930s called the “secret
apparatus” (al-jihaz al-sirri). That group
carried out attacks against the British, the
monarchy and senior officials. In 1948-49,
shortly after the MB played a key role in
mobilizing and sending volunteers to fight in
the war in Palestine, its conflict with the
monarchy reached its climax. Concerned
with the increasing assertiveness and
popularity of the MB, as well as with
rumors that it was plotting a coup d’état,
Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha disbanded
it on December 8, 1948. Less than three
weeks later, the MB retaliated by assassinating the prime minister. That in turn
prompted the murder of al-Banna, presumably by a government agent, on February
12, 1949. In 1954, the MB was blamed for
allegedly having tried to assassinate Gamal
Abdel Nasser. That event resulted in a
crackdown on the movement, the execution of its top leadership, and the jailing of
thousands of its active members.
This brief history illustrates how easily
“mainstream” Islamist movements can be
radicalized, and how quickly the ensuing
conflict with the authorities can spin out of
control. A focus on the MB also reveals
that radical groups often emerge from
more “moderate” ones. The core members of radical Islamist groups in Egypt
during the 1970s were often former MB
activists who had languished (and been
radicalized) in Nasser’s jails. Similarly, the
Palestinian Hamas emerged in 1988 out of
an internal coup within the Muslim Brotherhood, when a younger, more activist
generation of modest social origins broke
off from the MB, which at the time was
dominated by an “old guard” of well-to-do
merchants reluctant to confront Israel and
openly resist the occupation.19
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• Finally, the notion that radical Islamist
groups give priority to violent political
action, while moderate ones are more apt
to rely on grass-roots charitable and
educational activities also distorts a more
complex reality. In fact, social work has
been critical to the appeal and success of
groups such as Hizballah and Hamas,
which are usually labelled “radical.”
Hamas’s deep roots in Palestinian society
have much to do with the services it
provides to the community through the
hospitals, clinics, welfare organizations,
schools, libraries, kindergartens and clubs
attached to it. Similarly, in Lebanon,
Hizballah has benefited considerably from
the many years it has spent delivering
relief, health and educational services.
This activism has fed its appeal among the
more impoverished segments of the
population. Back in 1988, after intraChristian clashes in East Beirut had left the
residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs
without potable water and electricity,
Hizballah provided generators and ensured
a daily replenishment of local reservoirs by
using trucks to bring water to affected
areas. Three years later, during the harsh
1991-92 winter that hit the Bekaa Valley
particularly hard, Hizballah stepped into the
vacuum left by the government and
organized teams of relief workers who
cleared roads blocked by snow and distributed blankets and food to the poor. More
recently, in the wake of Israel’s devastating
April 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath,
Hizballah helped repair or rebuild an
estimated 5,000 homes as well as many
bridges and roads destroyed or damaged
by Israeli shelling.
On a day-to-day basis, Hizballah runs
community centers and provides subsidized
services and goods. It manages supermar-
kets and cooperatives that sell food at
discounted prices. It cares for orphans,
elderly persons and the families of those
killed or wounded in attacks against Israel.
Its schools provide a low-cost education
which is often of higher quality than that of
state-run schools. It awards scholarships
and offers interest-free loans to the needy.
It manages dispensaries, clinics and four
hospitals. Even those services and goods
for which Hizballah usually charges a fee
are provided free to impoverished families,
including medicine and hospitalization in
Hizballah’s hospitals and clinics, education in
the schools run by Hizballah staff, and food
packages in Hizballah-run supermarkets.20
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Distinguishing between moderate and
radical Islamists has clear policy implications, both for host governments and for
the United States. While fleshing out those
implications and looking at the empirical
bases for them goes beyond the scope of
this paper, I will summarize the essence of
the debate.21
Those who stress the need to differentiate between “mainstream” and “extremist” forms of political Islam usually suggest
that the main drift of government policy
should be to isolate, delegitimize and
marginalize the extremists, while providing
the moderates with the incentives and
rewards to play a constructive political and
social role. Implicit or explicit in this
reasoning are several interrelated assumptions or claims:
a. When “mainstream” Islamist
movements are given an opportunity to
express themselves relatively freely and
are allowed to pursue their objectives
within the confines of the legal political
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system, they typically refrain from violence
and can play the role of a loyal opposition.
Consequently, the argument goes, the more
open the political system, the stronger
moderate Islamists are likely to be relative
to their more radical counterparts, the more
likely it becomes that moderate Islamists
will show a propensity to engage in the
give-and-take of democratic politics, and
the more religious radicalism will be held in
check. Even when the participation of
moderate Islamists in the system appears
to be driven by opportunism and tactical
considerations, that situation may change
over time. With the proper incentives and
rewards, moderate Islamists may develop a
stake in the existing sociopolitical order and
therefore a more genuine attachment to it.
b. By contrast, regimes whose response to Islamism revolves primarily or
exclusively around an undifferentiated
repression of Islamist movements will play
into the hands of the violent fringe.
Across-the-board repression will discredit
the moderates, give credence to the
positions embraced by the radicals, and
drive many of the former into the arms of
the latter. Instead, government policy
should seek to multiply opportunities for
moderate Islamists to play a constructive
political role and use them as safety valves
against radical tendencies. It should
involve a carefully considered mix of
carrots and sticks, cracking down on
violent organizations while seeking to bring
moderate groups into the political process.
Such a two-track policy will serve to
demonstrate that violence will not be
tolerated, whereas moderation pays off and
results in tangible benefits.
also leaves some important questions
unanswered. For one, what happens if and
when “moderate” Islamists, benefiting
from a relatively open political process,
come to power and then change their
position regarding their earlier-stated desire
to preserve a pluralistic, democratic order?
What if their previous embrace of the “one
person, one vote” principle turns into a
position that can be summarized as “one
person, one vote, one time”? What if
moderate Islamists use the democratic
process to come to power and then abolish
that process?22 An academic observer
may have the luxury of saying that the only
way to determine whether moderate
Islamists are truly committed to democracy, and/or whether they are capable of
controlling more radical factions, is to
“test” them. Allow them to take part in a
relatively open political process and see
how democratically they behave if and
when they rise to power. That, however, is
a position with which policy makers – or
those likely to suffer under a repressive
government that discriminates against
minorities, women and secular-oriented
individuals – are likely to feel uncomfortable. For the United States, the problem is
compounded by the possibility that “moderate Islamists” may be “moderate” insofar
as their domestic-policy orientations are
concerned, but that their positions on
regional issues, such as relations between
Israel and the Arab world, may be in sharp
contrast to Washington’s.
Finally, to the extent that a given
Islamist movement is often composed of
several wings that hold different if not
contradictory views regarding democracy,
human rights and relations with the outside
world, how can a coherent policy toward
such a movement be developed? Even if
The reasoning that has just been
articulated is not devoid of merits, but it
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“moderates” appear to constitute the
dominant trend within that movement, how
can government policy toward it reflect the
possibility that the extremists might use the
moderates as a front or that under some
circumstances the former might displace
the latter? How can policy reduce the
likelihood that moderates will be outflanked
by more radical factions? After all,
between 1989 and 1991 in Algeria, the FIS
was widely viewed by experts as a “mainstream” Islamist movement, but moderates
in its ranks were very quickly bypassed
and neutralized by extremists after January
1992. Besides, historically, when movements split between moderates and radicals have come to power, more often than
not it is (at least in the early stages) the
radicals who have been able to displace the
moderates, not the other way around (in
the region, the Iranian revolution may be
seen as the latest manifestation of that
phenomenon).
These and other considerations lead
some analysts to question the appropriateness, for policy purposes, of drawing a
distinction between moderate and radical
Islamists. Such analysts believe that
Islamists cannot truly be accommodated
within a democratic system. In their view,
Islamists may profess a commitment to
democracy but only for tactical reasons,
when they stand to benefit from greater
political space. At heart, they never
espouse wholeheartedly democracy and its
values. The kind of society and political
order that they envision is irreconcilable
with a liberal, competitive political system
that does not discriminate against certain
groups and constituencies. Moreover, they
contend, there is no strong evidence that
policies of accommodation prompt Islamist
parties and leaders to moderate their views
and become more genuinely tolerant of,
and open to, alternative viewpoints and
ideas. In fact, quite the opposite may take
place, as Islamists become emboldened by
their increasing influence.
In fact, according to those same
analysts, efforts to appease, co-opt or
integrate Islamist movements into the
political process are likely to backfire,
creating a context within which political
radicalism and/or or social intolerance
ultimately may prevail. Islamists may
make inroads into centers of power, and
their norms and outlook may spread to
ever-wider segments of society. According to this view, accommodation of political
Islam is therefore a dangerous and selfdefeating behavior. A desire to placate or
appeal to moderate Islamists may prompt
regimes to adopt policies that slowly
change, for the worse, the face and social
fabric of their countries, undermining a
tradition of tolerance, threatening peaceful
coexistence with religious minorities,
making societies more rigid, and progressively creating an environment in which
extremist views may flourish.
Ultimately, the validity of such claims
must be tested against the weight of the
empirical evidence. A close examination of
this record, followed by a broad-based
debate on its significance, is more than
ever necessary if the United States is to
make informed policy choices regarding
one of the most difficult challenges it has
ever confronted.
Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. viii.
Ibid.
3
Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, “Foreword,” Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis, James
1
2
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Piscatori, ed., (Chicago: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991), p. xii.
4
See for instance Joel Beinin and Joe Stork, “On Modernity, Historical Specificity, and International Context
of Political Islam,” Political Islam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 3-4.
5
That argument is developed in Marty and Appleby, op. cit., pp. x-xi.
6
François Burgat, L’islamisme en face (Paris: La Découverte, 2002), pp. 275-276.
7
Roy, op. cit., p. 33.
8
See Ibid., pp. 38-39 and p. 197.
9
See Chapter 11, “L’islamisme et les femmes,” Burgat, op. cit.
10
That argument was first advanced in Roy, op. cit., especially Chapter 5 and Conclusion.
11
Roy, op. cit., was the first to develop that thesis, which at the time went against the conventional wisdom.
More recently, see Gilles Kepel, Jihad: expansion et déclin de I’islamisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2000).
12
See Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2000).
13
See for instance Bruno Etienne, L’Islamisme radical (Paris: Hachette, 1987).
14
On jihadist Salafism, see Kepel, op. cit., especially pp. 223-238, and Quintan Wiktorowicz, “The New
Global Threat: Transnational Salafis and Jihad,” Middle East Policy, Vol. VIII, No. 4, December 2001, pp. 18-38.
15
Kepel, op. cit., p. 228.
16
One of the most effective and comprehensive presentations of this feature can still be found in John L.
Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
17
Many of these arguments can be found in Scott W. Hibbard and David Little, Islamic Activism and U.S.
Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997). See also Fawaz A. Gerges,
America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge University Press, 1999), as
well as the debate between Mumtaz Ahmad and I. William Zartman, “Political Islam: Can it Become a Loyal
Opposition?” Middle East Policy, Vol. V, No. 1, January 1997, pp. 68-84.
18
See the excellent analysis conducted by two Israeli scholars in Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The
Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
19
Glenn E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1997), Chapter 6.
20
A brief analysis of Hizballah from the perspective of this paper can be found in Augustus Richard Norton,
“Hizballah: From Radicalism to Pragmatism?” Middle East Policy, Vol. V, No. 4, January 1998, pp. 147-158.
21
See Hibbard and Little, op. cit., and Esposito, op. cit., pp. 273-275.
22
Robert Pelletreau, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs during the Clinton administration, as
well as his predecessor, Edward Djerejian, repeatedly voiced such concerns publicly.
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